


Newborn

by Skullharvester



Series: Current WIPs [10]
Category: Baldur's Gate, Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, baldur's gate 3
Genre: Alternate Universe, Evil-Alignment Story, M/M, Tiefling, vampire
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:20:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29445453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skullharvester/pseuds/Skullharvester
Summary: The dark past that looms over the Szarr estate has dragged both the territory and the vampire lord inhabiting it into deeper and deeper despair over the years, but perhaps it is possible for new life to grow upon this blighted land.
Relationships: Cazador (Baldur's Gate)/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Current WIPs [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2120226
Comments: 9
Kudos: 6





	1. Infancy

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Title: "I Write Sitcoms, Not Tragedies"
> 
> Enjoy and have fun!
> 
> If you liked this tale, please drop me a kudos and/or a comment to let me know if you'd like to see more!
> 
> Thank you, and have a wonderful night!

* * *

* * *

Every once in a while, Cazador Szarr would survey his domain in the form of a bat. He didn’t always trust the competence nor judgment of his vampire spawn, and it helped to get out and stretch his wings on occasion. He often stayed cooped up in the crypts or what was left of his manor for too long, and though he barely noticed the passing of time after centuries of living an unnatural life, sometimes it felt as if the all too familiar walls were closing in on him. It was stifling.

Each year, the once-proud Szarr estate drifted further and further into dreariness. Cazador could hardly remember the beauty of this place before it became known as the Cliffside Cemetery. Formerly vivid recollections were further clouded by the fact that he also couldn’t remember what sunlight was like, and most of his fondest memories of home took place during the daylight hours. Anything he could picture in his mind when he recalled them seemed heavily romanticized. He knew it couldn’t have been as wonderful as he remembered it to be. Nothing ever was.

Wherever there had been beautiful flowers, there were now thistles and thorns. Some blossoms remained, but they were sickly and were better used for poisons than fragrances. Trees were gnarled and lacking in leaves; they shook in the cold air as if freezing in the wintertime, even amid the summer season. Underneath the thick perpetual fog that rolled through the territory, the shadows played tricks on observers, attempting to frighten them or make them question their sanity by moving as if they were living things and by taking on terrifying forms. 

Whatever once was lovely here within the Szarr family holdings was now gone, and any hidden beauty that could be found slowly faded away, consumed by the dark magic that gripped this formerly happy home—an aura that Cazador himself brought here. Misery liked company, and for all his contempt of others, his blackened soul yearned for it dearly. 

Everyone wanted to be loved, and many like Cazador would settle for some sick and twisted form of it if it couldn’t be gotten naturally. The lingering spirits of his deceased family couldn’t love him anymore; they were warped by the tragedy of their sudden deaths. 

His vampire spawn didn’t love him, either, because he was monstrous to them; his own sense of “love” had been tainted and turned into something more akin to possession, and so he _made_ his underlings love him through magical manipulation conjured by their blood bond, coercion, and torture. He knew that subconsciously, they despised him, but he used his power over them to push that feeling deep down within them, stowing it away.

Only one person in this world genuinely loved Cazador Szarr, and that man was a fool who was desperate to be loved himself. And Cazador would soon find out that even he had been disloyal.

Soaring above the battlefield where his minions fought off any undead who would not bend to their master’s will, Cazador saw—far off in the distance—a lone figure hobbling up the path. Though he usually liked to watch his lackeys fight for a while, to see which of his loyal servants were failing in their capacity to defend his domain and which were the most capable, he was curious to see who this was coming so close to his partly destroyed manor, and thus he flew after them.

Most mourners were wary about approaching the mansion itself. Even though The Gravemakers—the other protectors of this place that Cazador had put under his control—were fairly cordial to visitors who caused no trouble at the graveyard, people were suspicious of the faction, perhaps aware that not all was well with them.

Cazador, in his bat form, hovered above the manor’s entrance, listening in on the argument that took place between the Gravemaker that guarded the door and the trespasser: a violet-hued tiefling woman, who was evidently in the late stages of pregnancy.

“I _know_ he’s here! I saw him walk past the gate!” the woman shouted, pointing her finger in the Gravemaker’s face.

“Calm down before—”

“Before what?! Don’t be ridiculous; this is urgent. You _must_ let me see him. _Please_.”

When Cazador saw that the Gravemaker was reaching for her sword, he decided it was time to make his presence known before matters escalated. He flew around to a shadowy corner of the building and transformed back into his true form, then walked over to the women.

“Put your sword away,” he commanded the Gravemaker, who immediately sheathed her blade.

The Gravemaker bowed to him respectfully. “I had no intention of using it, my lord. I was only trying to scare her off, is all.”

The vampire lord stepped closer towards his servant. “Who is she looking for?”

“Lord Bludov, my lord,” the Gravemaker answered, perfecting her posture to appear more attentive.

Cazador’s predatory gaze shifted to the tiefling woman. “For what purpose?”

Too embarrassed to be direct, the tiefling held her swollen abdomen protectively, looking down at it to avoid meeting Cazador’s piercing eyes. “I imagine you can _guess_ , good sir…”

Noting her master’s sudden silence, the Gravemaker asked, “My lord? Are you unwell?”

Cazador’s fist tightened and his jaw clenched. It looked as if he were about to burst a blood vessel with how much the muscles in his neck strained.

The Gravemaker tried again to get his attention. “Lord Szarr?”

Ignoring his servant’s concern, Cazador grabbed the tiefling by the arm and dragged her inside of the manor. When she shrieked in alarm, his grip on her tightened and he yanked her closer to him so that she could hear him mutter something privately to her, since they weren’t yet out of earshot of the Gravemaker. 

“Stop screaming!” he commanded, and she obeyed out of fear for her life. “We’re going to go find _Lord Bludov_ , and then the both of you are going to explain _everything_ to me!”

* * *

“Dobrogost? Dobrogost, get in here, damn you! I know that’s you stomping around! I can hear you!” Cazador exclaimed when he entered the sitting room with the woman still in his grasp.

Moments later, the male tiefling walked in, expecting to find Cazador by himself. “Yes? Is something the matter?” Dobrogost paused and analyzed the woman when he spotted her, slowly piecing together in his head what her business at the Szarr estate could possibly be, and soon he realized that he recognized her. “Ah, shit.”

Cazador grabbed Dobrogost by his tail before he could dash right back out the door. “And just where do you think you’re going?”

“Nowhere, of course!” Dobrogost chuckled nervously, now staying put.

“And you,” the vampire then said to the woman as he released her, “go sit down and don’t move. I’m going to speak with _him_ first, in private, and you had better hope that your stories align when it’s _your_ turn to answer my questions.”

The woman bobbed her head agreeably, mesmerized by Cazador’s hypnotic stare. She went to sit in an armchair, where she’d patiently wait while the two men stepped outside of the room.

The moment the door closed, Cazador’s anger erupted. “Who is that woman?!”

Dobrogost rubbed at the back of his neck anxiously, heavily pressured into searching for the right words that would lessen his lover’s rage. Aware that Cazador wouldn’t wait long for him to speak, he rambled out a hasty explanation. “She is a tavern wench that I spent a night with at The Blushing Mermaid. I thought I had “dealt” with her afterward, but I must have passed out drunk after I came—you know that happens to me sometimes. She was gone when I awoke hours later; I couldn't find her, and she never returned to work after that, so—"

“The fact that you "almost" got rid of the evidence of what you did doesn't infuriate me any less!” Cazador barked, reaching up to grab the tiefling’s beard and tug him down to eye-level. “And just how did you get out of your chastity belt, anyway?!”

“I, er, well…” Dobrogost’s hesitation to reveal his secret was ultimately crushed by Cazador’s unrelenting glare. “Astarion…owed me a favor, so he picked the lock for me at my request. But I put it right back on after I had my fun that night! I swear!”

“Astarion owed you a favor in exchange for _what_ , exactly?” Before Dobrogost could conjure up some excuse, Cazador let go of the tiefling’s beard and held up a hand. “Actually, we can discuss that matter _later_. Right now, I have half a mind to castrate the _both_ of you. How _dare_ you—”

“I’m sorry!” Dobrogost blurted out, tossing up his hands. “I didn't think you would be _that_ angry about it! It's not as if this woman meant anything to me! You're the only one that I—"

“Didn’t think I would be that angry about you bedding someone behind my back?!” Cazador poked his lover harshly in the chest. “I know that you’re a fool, Dobrogost, but even _you’re_ not that stupid! You knew better than to betray my trust!”

The tiefling scoffed indignantly. “Trust?!” He straightened the collar of his coat in a huff, puffing out his chest. “You call keeping my cock in a cage “trust”?!”

Cazador mirrored his posture in an attempt to be more intimidating, despite being significantly shorter. “And _clearly_ even _that_ doesn’t stop you from disobeying my wishes!”

“ _Your_ wishes…” Dobrogost snorted again, sulking. His long tail flitted agitatedly, and it was bruising slightly where Cazador grabbed it earlier. “What about _my_ needs, Cazzy? You withhold sex from me whenever it suits you. It gives me mixed signals, you know. I can never tell if it’s elaborate foreplay or if you’re pissed off at me or something!”

“Is it really so difficult to tell?!”

“Yes! You’re always grumpy!”

“Only because I’m surrounded by imbeciles like you!”

“Cazzy…” Dobrogost held his arms out to offer a comforting embrace, hoping that would curb their argument, but the vampire slapped him away.

“Don’t you “Cazzy” me! I’ll flay you for this myself!”

The tiefling sighed, backing off a few paces. “Little bat, _please_ settle down! You don’t mean anything that you say!”

Cazador’s voice only continued to rise, and he struck Dobrogost across the chest with an open hand several more times for good measure. “I’m going to _murder_ you, you cretinous whore!”

The pair were interrupted from their domestic squabble when they overheard the woman cry out from the sitting room.

Cazador covered his face with his hand and groaned. “What’s she carrying on in there for? We’ve hardly been gone for a few moments—” By the second time that she wailed, he understood what was going on. “Gods _damn_ it! It’s always something in this household, isn’t it?!” He snarled at Dobrogost, “This is all your fault, you stupid, bloody oaf!”

“I said that I’m sorry!”

“Enough!” Cazador kicked the door open, too furious to suppress his tantrum. “What is it?!” he snapped at the woman, though he already had an idea. “What are you in here moaning about?! Out with it!”

“I need a midwife,” she replied, wincing and holding onto her stomach with her knees locked together.

Cazador pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, contemplating what could be done in this unanticipated situation. “I can’t believe you waited _this long_ to confront the father of your child. You _really_ had to bring this debacle to my doorstep, did you?”

Understandably, the tiefling woman was in too much agony to answer. Her other hand squeezed the armrest of her chair while she rocked back and forth in it. Tears rolled down her face as she began to weep from the pain of her contractions.

The vampire lord turned to Dobrogost and grumbled, “Fetch me some old towels and a basin of warm water. You can do that, can’t you?”

Dobrogost blinked at him, baffled by the odd request. “What are you going to do?”

“What do you _think_ I’m going to do?” Cazador asked, exasperated already by the night’s events. “I’ve delivered horses in the past. Humanoid offspring can’t be much different.”

The woman looked up, seemingly offended by the remark. “Excuse me?!”

Cazador directed his attention back to her, frowning more severely. “Oh, so _now_ you’re able to speak. Get on the floor. I don’t want you staining my chair, but the rug I couldn’t care less about. I’ve been meaning to replace it, anyway.”

“How cruel you are!” she gasped. “And I don’t want you between my legs; I don’t know you!”

Her reaction amused Cazador enough to make him chuckle, albeit sarcastically. “That didn’t stop you from sleeping with my partner!” He finally shooed Dobrogost away, reminding him that time was of the essence.

“That was different!” the woman said, watching the other tiefling rush off in the corner of her eye.

“I’m surprised he even got anyone besides myself into bed with him willingly!” said Cazador, coming over to her; that was all it took to convince her to scramble out of the armchair and shimmy towards the center of the rug. “Did he pay you?”

“How dare you!” She recoiled from the lord when he knelt beside her, glowering at him defensively.

“It doesn’t matter,” Cazador decided, taking off his tunic. “Now, do you want your child to die, or are you going to stop your infantile whinging and let me handle this?”

“Infantile?” The woman scooted away from Cazador. “I can tell you’re no physician. You have _no_ bedside manner, or _any_ manners, for that matter!”

“I asked you a simple question, and you have two choices. As you can tell, I’m not a very patient man, so I suggest that you decide quickly.” Cazador folded up his tunic and set it aside, rolled up his sleeves, then sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at the tiefling seriously. “It’s not often that I am this merciful, but I admit that I’m curious to see for myself whether or not this baby _truly_ belongs to my significant other.”

Though they weren’t “real” options that he gave her, the woman knew that she had to concede to one of them. “Alright,” she said, reluctantly leaning back against her elbows. “But don’t speak to me while you’re doing this. I want to pretend you’re not there.” 

She was already looking away from Cazador before he even began to undress the lower half of her body. He was startled by a sudden yelp from her when he was midway through the task, and he paused to peer up at her face. He assumed she was having another contraction.

“Shut up, will you?” Cazador’s nerves were already on edge, and the woman’s unintended disruption worsened his stress, which he then took out on her.

“I’m having a baby!” she reminded him, astounded that he couldn’t empathize with her situation.

“Surely, you could do so a little more quietly, couldn’t you?” he asked, then he returned to what he was doing. “My horse never made this much noise…”

The woman cried out again and burst into tears when another contraction struck her even harder than the last few

Cazador sighed. “Apparently not…”

* * *

There weren’t many hours left in the night by the time that Cazador had managed to deliver the baby and clean it off. It turned out to be a little girl. Aside from having her mother’s violet skin, she did bear a striking resemblance to Dobrogost. Cazador thought he’d be irate about receiving proof that his lover sired the infant, but he felt quite the opposite as he bundled the tiefling child up in one of the clean towels that Dobrogost brought to him.

The child’s mother was still laying on the rug, exhausted and on the verge of fainting, but Cazador hardly paid any attention to the woman now that he was cradling the baby in his arms. He couldn’t take his eyes off the crying child, whom he soothed into silence by rocking her in his arms and gazing into her eyes, utilizing some of his vampiric charms to lull her into a sense of security.

“The bleeding hasn’t stopped,” said the woman, whose panic was rising in response to her revelation. “Is this normal?”

Cazador glanced at the woman briefly, then disregarded her once more, standing up carefully and heading for the door.

“Wait!” the woman shouted. “Where are you going with my baby? I think I’m dying! Aren’t you going to help me?!”

Still, he said nothing, and he shut the door with the heel of his boot after he left. The woman screamed and screamed for aid, and the noise startled the baby into crying again, but Cazador stroked the child’s soft head and hushed her once they were too far away to hear her mother anymore.

“It’s alright, my dear,” Cazador murmured to the child, holding her close and kissing her forehead. “I’ll take care of you from now on.”

He couldn’t determine why, but the baby’s presence made his soul feel lighter. Did this emotion come naturally with fatherhood, or was it another reminder of his own damnation as a vampire? Who could say? Either way, he was thrilled to be near her.

Cazador went upstairs to find Dobrogost laying on the bed in his old bedroom, where they often convened in private. The tiefling man was staring up at the ceiling, likely having an internal crisis about the prospect of being a parent—a stark contrast to Cazador’s sentiments.

Dobrogost sat up, clasping his hands between his thighs, and swung his legs back and forth at the edge of the bed. “I take it that everything went well?” Cazador’s serenity clearly unnerved him when he picked up on the vampire’s abrupt change in mood, but he went along with it and made space for his lover to sit beside him.

“Look at her,” Cazador said as he proudly presented the baby to her father. “Isn’t she beautiful, darling?”

Leaning closer until he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Cazador, Dobrogost nodded with an indifferent expression. “What happened to the mother?”

Cazador scowled at him. “Never mind her,” he grumbled. “Now, what do you suppose we should name our child?”

The use of a certain word raised Dobrogost’s eyebrows. “ _Our_?”

“Yes, _our_. You’re obviously her father. She has your eyes. Aren’t they precious?”

“Cazzy…”

The vampire smiled a little, gently bouncing the baby in his arms. “She’s such a lovely shade of purple. What about “Violeta”? I think that would be fitting, don’t you?”

“Cazador, I’m not sure that I want to be a father,” Dobrogost confessed bluntly.

The smile disappeared from Cazador’s lips. “You should have thought about that before you decided to cheat on me. But I’m willing to forgive you, if only because it’s granted me this child, which we are keeping. My decision is final, and I will hear no argument from you. Be grateful for my malevolence.”

Dobrogost pursed his lips thoughtfully as he observed the child that squirmed in Cazador’s arms. “…She _is_ kind of cute,” he admitted after a while. “Can I hold her?”

The moment Dobrogost reached out for the baby, Cazador possessively held her away. “Perhaps later…”

“I swear, Cazzy,” Dobrogost said with a laugh. “You can’t hold a damned thing for more than a few seconds without deciding that it suddenly belongs to you.”

Cazador narrowed his eyes at his lover. “And?”

Grinning, Dobrogost patted Cazador’s shoulder, then kissed him on the head. “Fine, you win. It’s not like I could stop you, anyway.”

Cazador found himself in a better mood as well. “Right you are, my dear.” He stood and added, “Come, let’s go see if that old pram in the nursery is still in decent condition.”

Dobrogost got up to open the door for Cazador, then followed him out of the bedroom, curling an arm around the vampire’s lower back to rest his hand upon his hip. “If it’s not, Oleg can probably fix it.”

“Wonderful!” Cazador sounded more chipper than he ever had, at least for as long as Dobrogost knew him.

“You’re really excited about all this, aren’t you?” Dobrogost asked, highly entertained by his partner’s unusual demeanor.

“I’ve always wanted children of my own,” Cazador confessed, cuddling the baby as they walked together. “You’ll sing her a lullaby, won’t you? You know my voice has never been very suited for singing…”

Squeezing Cazador’s hip affectionately, Dobrogost’s smile widened. “Of course, my love. For you: anything.”

It had been so many years ago that the Szarr family was slain by one of their rivals in this very manor, and the home had never felt the same after that fateful night. Until now, that is.


	2. Adolescence

There wasn’t much peace or quiet at the Szarr estate anymore, for several reasons. Even now, Cazador hadn’t grown accustomed to that. It used to be that he could lock himself away for a few hours each night, if he so wished, and have total serenity, provided that something didn’t go terribly wrong and require his immediate attention.

With a child running around his home, Cazador’s attention was frequently divided, though that was primarily his own doing. If anything, he was bothering his young daughter more than she was bothering him; he didn’t like to be apart from her, and he had to make himself delegate some of her upbringing to his servants just so that he could make time for anything else.

He nearly felt guilty about spending some of his time catching up on reading one of the latest collections of local poetry (which, of course, contained some of his own submissions), but he liked to compare his own work with the other poets of Baldur’s Gate. Primarily so that he could gloat to himself about how superior he believed he was when compared to them.

Besides, Cazador also hadn’t spent much quality time with his partner lately, and currently, he and Dobrogost were curled up together on the couch in his personal library. The tiefling, being a plump man, made for a good pillow, and he didn’t seem to mind that Cazador was laying with his back against him while he held the book open for both of them to read it.

“Hold it up a little more,” said Dobrogost, squinting his eyes at the pages. “I can’t see.”

Cazador fulfilled his request begrudgingly. “I think you need glasses.”

Dobrogost snorted. “I think you forget what it’s like to have regular eyes. A vampire’s senses are very keen, are they not?”

The vampire lord pursed his lips, resentful of the reminder that his mortal days were so blurry and distant. “Point taken.” He licked his finger and turned the page.

“Hey, I wasn’t done reading that yet!” Dobrogost whined. “Go back!”

Cazador gave a dramatic sigh as he flipped to the previous page. “How far behind are you?”

“I’m still at the top of the second page.”

“Dobrogost, darling, _please_ read a little bit faster,” Cazador begged, pressing the back of his head against the tiefling’s chest and tilting it to look up at him. “Remember that we have other things we need to get done tonight, too. Must I read _to_ you as I do for our child?”

His lover considered the question seriously, then grinned. “That _would_ be very romantic of you to do, Cazzy…”

That was the answer that Cazador expected. Or hoped for, rather, though he would obscure that secret desire by rolling his eyes, putting on a show of him supposedly dreading the whole thing. He didn’t want Dobrogost to discover that he had such sway over his behavior, and aside from that, it was apparent to the vampire that his lover enjoyed his fussy demeanor. Dobrogost wasn’t the only one who could act.

“Very well,” Cazador relented before beginning to recite the entirety of the page they were on aloud, pausing in between poems to lick his dry lips or clear his throat. His voice sometimes took on a slightly raspy quality, to Cazador’s dismay since he feared it revealed his ancientness, but Dobrogost was mollified by the sound of his voice as much as his singing calmed Cazador.

Brushing Cazador’s hair behind his shoulder, Dobrogost leaned down to kiss at his neck while he was read to, and though he was listening attentively, the vampire found his administrations to be a mild distraction. Cazador shooed him away twice throughout his narration, but by the third time the tiefling brought his lips back to the cold and pallid flesh, his affections were permitted without another dismissal.

Without glancing away from the book in his hand nor pausing in verse, Cazador raised a hand up to his lover’s head, massaging the uneven fold of skin around one of his shapely black horns.

The couple was several pages further into the book, and Dobrogost was half asleep with his long tail laid across Cazador’s lap and his head rested on the vampire’s shoulder, when little Violeta ran into the room, waving a piece of parchment above her head, which now had stubby little horns of her own growing out of it.

When she was an infant, her horns were but small, fleshy nubs barely poking out of her forehead. From the shape they were taking now, it was clear that she would one day have horns as impressive as her biological father’s. Like Dobrogost when he was a child, she was growing amazingly fast, and would probably end up being nearly as tall, too.

“Daddy! Papa!” she yelled as she ran towards her parents. Her voice lowered but remained just as excited when she clambered into Cazador’s lap and awoke Dobrogost with a start by sitting on his tail. “Look what I made for you!” 

Violeta slipped the parchment between the pages of Cazador’s open book where he could see it, and she smiled confidently, possibly oblivious that her other father’s tail was being pulled out from beneath her.

Cazador held the book in his hand further from his face and narrowed his eyes, keenly examining the details of the colorful, yet crude drawing. He took it out from between the pages and held it at an angle where Dobrogost could more easily see it, too.

“Oh, how lovely,” said Cazador, with some effort. The perfectionist and artist within him cringed at her unskilled linework, but the parent in him found great sentimental value in the piece she’d created. “Thank you, dear. You’re very talented. We’ll put this one on the wall, with the others.”

“I think you’re already better at drawing than I am!” Dobrogost remarked, making an expression that was between a grimace and a proud smirk while he stroked his aching tail. If anyone had seen his outlandish paintings, they would know he was speaking the truth. Though he loved to paint in his spare time, he hadn’t much patience for the craft. Music was his forte, and it absorbed nearly all his attention.

“Thanks, Papa.” Violeta smiled over at Dobrogost, then laid her head on Cazador’s arm lovingly. The vampire lord gave her a small smile, then looked back to the drawing ponderously.

It was strange, for Cazador, to think that this was his daughter’s idea of what a family looked like. 

Along with herself, nearly everyone she interacted with on a nightly basis was depicted in the drawing: Cazador himself was there, holding her in his arms, not smiling, yet not frowning either; Dobrogost was next to him with a hand on his waist; Astarion flanked the opposite side of him, pouting; Oleg, his lover’s ghastly servant, loomed next to Dobrogost like a shadow much too thin to match the tall tiefling’s wide frame; and all around what Cazador supposed his daughter considered to be her immediate family were his other vampire spawn and notable members of The Gravemakers. 

With this being her perception of a family, the likelihood of her having a normal childhood was slim to none. Cazador could only imagine how her environment and the people within it were shaping her worldview. Even he had a relatively ordinary childhood, as far as noble upbringings went, meaning that he was severely out of touch with the common people in his youth, but not separated from normality on this level. Granted, his limited ability to recall mortality was fleeting, but he was certain that retaining a sliver of that memory was useful for something. What became of mortals who _never_ understood what that was like and lived solely among death and morbidity?

Cazador didn’t look away from the drawing until Violeta began tugging on his sleeve to get his attention. “What’s wrong, Daddy? You look sad,” she muttered.

“Do I?” As a temporary measure to preserve both the picture and the page he was reading, Cazador used the drawing as a bookmark, then set the book on the arm of the couch. He felt his face with his hands, noticing that there were a few creases in it. He was usually better about hiding his feelings when he wanted to; it was part of what made him so unnerving. “Ah, it’s nothing, sweetheart. I’ve got a lot on my mind. Papa and I are going out later tonight to do something important, and I want you to stay here with one of the servants.”

“Can I come with you?” Violeta peered at Dobrogost, thinking that she might have better luck convincing him, but he purposefully looked in the other direction. Her focus turned back to Cazador. “Please?”

“No,” Cazador answered bluntly. “You’re too young to stay here by yourself.”

She fidgeted and whined, building up an impending tantrum. “But—”

“Listen to Cazador, Violeta,” Dobrogost interjected, speaking firmly. “He’s trying to keep you safe.”

The vampire gave his lover an approving smile, which made Dobrogost’s tail wiggle happily.

Violeta groaned, folding her arms. “Hmh… Okay… Can Astarion stay with me?”

Dobrogost chuckled at her request, but Cazador wasn’t so amused.

“Darling,” said Cazador, “I’m not sure that Astarion would be the best person to look after you. I was thinking of having—”

“I’ll be good!” said Violeta, clasping her hands together pleadingly.

“It’s not _your_ behavior I’m worried about,” Cazador replied.

“C’mon, Cazzy.” Dobrogost draped his arms around the back of the couch leisurely, grunting as he adjusted his body to get comfortable. “Why not let Astarion look after her for one night, eh? You’re always chewing him out whenever we take him along with us, anyway, so why not save yourself the headache and make our daughter happy as a bonus?”

It irritated Cazador when his partner took the opposing side to his decisions, regardless of whether he made a valid point. “I wish you wouldn’t undermine my authority in front of our child,” Cazador mumbled into Dobrogost’s ear. “You’re going to turn her into a spoiled brat that way.”

Dobrogost’s belly puffed out when he laughed, nudging Cazador forward momentarily. “Heh, then she’ll be just like her parents, in that case. I don’t see the problem.”

Cazador gave his lover a warning glare. “Dobrogost…”

“Caz, do we really have to argue in front of her?”

“I’m not _arguing_ , I’m putting my foot down.”

There was another tug at Cazador’s sleeve. “Don’t fight,” muttered their daughter, who seemed overly concerned about how her parents’ voices were slowly rising.

Putting a hand on her shoulder, Cazador calmly said, “We’re not fighting.”

Her lips pursed and quivered. “I don’t want you to fight because of me…”

“Now, why would you think that, my dear?”

She lowered her head and played with her clawed fingers. “Because most of the time when you and Papa get loud, you’re talking about me…”

Cazador glanced at his partner in search of his thoughts on the matter.

Dobrogost shrugged indifferently. “I mean, it’s true, isn’t it?”

“Be that as it may…” Clutching the bridge of his nose, Cazador sighed. “Violeta, I believe that both of us only want what’s _best_ for you. It’s just that Papa and I have passionate disagreements about what, exactly, _is_ best for you. Does that make sense?”

She nodded, but the uncertain look in her eyes indicated that she remained mystified by their behavior. “But you still love each other, right?”

“Of course, darling. I love your Papa very much.” To prove to her that all was well, Cazador reached up to stroke Dobrogost’s long beard, and though his significant other knew that the display of affection was somewhat of a show for their daughter’s sake, it was appreciated all the same. “I just have a strange way of showing it at times.”

“Heh,” Dobrogost chuckled sarcastically again and received a mild frown from the vampire, which he responded to by sticking out his split tongue at him.

Violeta giggled, instantly entertained into a better mood. “So, can Astarion stay with me?” she asked again, using a sweeter tone.

“Is that _really_ what you want?” Cazador asked, raising his brow skeptically. He seemed disappointed when she nodded. “Well, alright, but don’t start expecting me to change my mind whenever you want something done your way.”

After lifting her up out of his lap, Cazador stood and held Violeta above his hip as if she weighed nothing and smiled when she giggled happily. She was getting to be too old to be carried, but he would do so for as long as he reasonably could. It saddened him to think that she wouldn’t stay this small forever and would eventually have to grow up, as all children do. He had, however, anticipated that it would’ve taken a longer period of time. 

One moment, she could hardly crawl, and the next she was able to run. How long would it be before she was running off elsewhere to start a life of her own? That was the most worrying thought, and it was one that left him staring up at the lid of his coffin at the end of the night, unable to sleep.

“Darling, go upstairs and brush your hair before we leave,” Cazador said to his partner.

Dobrogost sank into the couch cushions sullenly. “There are combs and brushes in my dressing room at the theater. I’ll do it there.”

“You’re not showing up to work looking like that. Mr. Goodnight will assume you’ve been drinking again.”

“It’s just a rehearsal! Who cares if he thinks I’ve been drinking again? I’ll just breathe in his face and prove him wrong.”

“Upstairs. Now.” The vampire snapped his fingers impatiently, pointing at the ceiling.

Violeta frowned up at Cazador, but she didn’t voice her disappointment, fearing that the request that she’d been granted would be revoked if she upset him.

“Fine, I’m going,” Dobrogost grumbled, leaving his cozy spot on the couch. He tousled Violeta’s short black hair when he passed by, flashing her a quick grin that she mirrored in turn, and after he left the room, his heavy boots could be heard plodding up the old wooden stairs.

Meanwhile, Cazador headed in the opposite direction down the hall, taking Violeta with him to the Szarr family crypts below the manor.

* * *

With his heightened senses, Cazador could faintly hear the voice of his “most favored” vampire spawn echoing in the hall, originating from the chamber at the end of it.

_“I think this whole thing—my master’s attempts to play “house” with your master and that bastard of his—is the most unsettling thing he’s done yet, don’t you?”_

A hoarse cough from Oleg, Dobrogost’s servant, followed Astarion’s words after a thoughtful pause. _“Hm, well, I’m not so sure I’d say it’s the most unsettling thing. Though, not much unsettles me these days…”_

Astarion’s frustrated groan resonated louder than his speech, awakening a flock of bats that were resting on the hallway’s ceiling but now sought to flee the crypts in a hurry. _“Obviously, I’m exaggerating, but…”_

Cazador didn’t so much as flinch when the bats flew over his head and the wind stirred from underneath their flapping wings swept up his hair, but Violeta stretched out her arms in the hopes of petting one of the tiny creatures. Her hand grazed against the fur of two of the bats, which pleased her greatly, but her smile dissolved when Cazador gently grabbed her wrist and lowered it, shaking his head to chastise her curiosity.

“Why can’t I touch them, Daddy?” she asked. “They’re so soft.”

“They bite, dear,” Cazador explained.

“So?” Violeta stuck out her bottom lip in a pout. “You do, too…”

The vampire lord massaged her little palm with his thumb affectionately. “But I’d never bite you,” he cooed. When she nuzzled his neck, he tilted his head to avoid being scratched by her horns.

The door at the end of the hall swung open before Cazador even reached it, and upon entering, he saw that it was Oleg who opened the door for him. The ghast was completely unsurprised by his sudden appearance, but Astarion was startled to see him.

“M-Master!” the elven vampire spawn stammered. “I didn’t sense you coming at all,” he added with a timid chuckle. “Oh, how I do wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”

Cazador wasn’t impressed with Astarion’s attempt at playfulness and came to stand inches away from him with the child in his arms deliberately held away from view. 

“Why?” the elder vampire snapped. “So that you’ll better know whether or not it’s safe to speak ill of me behind my back? For the record, it’s _never_ safe, regardless of whether I’m present to hear it. If my daughter weren’t here right now, I’d…”

Astarion, staring at him wide-eyed in terror, waited for his master to finish the thought, but Cazador was reluctant to say anything further on the matter when Violeta’s ears were listening.

“We’ll speak of your punishment later,” Cazador said, setting his daughter’s feet to the floor. “Right now, I need you to look after my child for the rest of this evening.”

“What?!” Astarion gasped. “Why me? Why not Oleg?” He pointed at the ghast, who was pretending to look busy and disinterested in eavesdropping on the conversation by tightening the screws in his lantern using his long, jagged fingernails. 

Oleg didn’t look up when he was addressed. Unlike Astarion, he knew when to mind his own business for his own good. Or rather, he knew how to _appear_ as if he were. It was a skill he was attempting to pass on to Astarion, if only he would listen when he ought to, but the elf’s hearing was selective in all the wrong ways.

“Because Oleg’s scent still makes Violeta get nausea and fainting spells,” said Cazador, who seethed at the fact that Astarion had the nerve to question an order from him.

It wasn’t so much that Oleg had poor hygiene (though that was part of it) that caused Violeta to fall ill while she was in close proximity to the ghast for a period of time, but rather that it was a common trait for undead of his type; their overpowering odor gave them an upper hand against living people who were not adjusted to the heavy smell of decay. 

“And aside from that,” Cazador continued on, “she specifically requested _you_ to be her sitter. I’m not any happier about the matter than you are, but what matters is that _she_ is happy. As you know, seeing her happy makes _me_ happy. Do you get what I’m saying here, my boy?”

Astarion lowered his head, shifting his gaze towards the floor with his shoulders slumped. “Yes, master. I understand…”

“Excellent.” Cazador knelt beside Violeta and kissed her forehead. “Now, behave while I’m gone tonight, my dear. And more importantly: make sure that _Astarion_ behaves as well. You’ll tell me if he breaks any of my rules, won’t you?” 

To Astarion’s dismay, Violeta nodded obediently.

“That’s a good girl.” Standing back up, Cazador clapped Oleg on the shoulder on his way out. “Let’s be off, Oleg; I’ll need you to accompany your master and I for tonight.”

“Sure,” the ghast agreed, trailing behind his superior.

“Master?” Astarion shouted. “Who all are you taking with you? I thought you were only taking Lord Bludov to his opera rehearsal tonight.”

Without turning around or stopping in his tracks, Cazador simply raised his voice so that his reply would echo through the catacombs. “I’ll be taking the rest of the coven with me! There’s another, more important affair I must attend to tonight!”

To say that Astarion hated accompanying his master when he went out was an understatement, but this was one of the few situations that Astarion would have liked to be around for. If it was something that required the presence of nearly the entire coven, that meant there was going to be a lot of bloodshed. Bloodshed that Astarion would miss out on taking part in. 

It was true that he wouldn’t have been able to drink any of the blood he spilled if it came from a humanoid, but the overpowering aroma that filled the air in the aftermath of carnage made his skin tingle as if it were alive again. If the smell of a humanoid’s blood alone did that to him, he could only fantasize about what drinking it must be like. It had to be an intoxicating experience, better than any wine. 

And he always hoped that perhaps one day, his master might reward him with the privilege of trying it at least once. That was unlikely, but not impossible. Cazador was known to be unpredictable. After all, Astarion didn’t expect that he’d want to _keep_ his lover’s bastard child, let alone treat her as his own. If that could happen, then Astarion figured that anything could.

Astarion was pulled away from his thoughts when Violeta waddled up to him and held onto his hand, smiling expectantly at him. Her warm touch caused him to recoil, but she wouldn’t let go when he drew his arm back; she held on tightly.

As a vampire—especially as one that was deprived of proper nourishment—it was maddening to sense the signs of life around him. It wasn’t nearly as difficult for Cazador—who could practically drink from any creature he wanted whenever it fancied him—to resist the temptation to drink from anything in sight with a pulse, but for Astarion—someone accustomed to having meager options—it was not so easy.

Truly, the only thing that held Astarion back was his master’s magical power over him. It certainly wasn’t a sense of guilt that was giving him pause. Were he not bound by Cazador’s rules, any throat would be ripe for the tearing. Man, woman, child—it wouldn’t matter. He was desperate to taste _anything_ other than the vile, congealed blood of a deceased rat.

“Let’s go to my room,” Violeta suggested, taking the initiative of leading Astarion through the crypts.

She’d been down here plenty of times, enough to know her way alarmingly well. Cazador fretted about the potential of her getting lost down here, but little did he know, his child liked to wander in these old crypts all the time when no one was paying attention. 

Those were often the nights where Dobrogost was charged to look after her. His parenting style was a lot more…lenient, for better or for worse.

“Don’t go so fast!” Astarion warned her. “It’s hard to walk while you’ve got me bent over to your height like this!” His unbalanced feet stumbled after the child that dragged him along the halls and up the stairs as if he were one of her favored dolls.

He was so weary of being treated like the Szarr family’s personal property, and this child wasn’t even a true Szarr.

* * *

Upon entering her room, Violeta pushed a stuffed animal—the newest one she’d gotten for her birthday a tenday ago—out of its chair at her cutesy little tea table to make room for Astarion to sit down, while she went to sit across from him. Her chair was almost too big for her, but Astarion’s was almost too small for him.

Astarion grumbled and adjusted his position in the tiny seat, but the wood surface was so firm that it was like sitting on a rock. Eventually, he snatched the stuffed animal off the floor and used it as a cushion for his backside; Violeta didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. Why would she? Her parents gave her more toys than she knew what to do with.

Even Cazador, who feared she may grow up into a petulant and unruly person, couldn’t resist lavishing her with material things. It was his way of making up for nights like these, in which he couldn’t spend much quality time with her. They were gifts intended to remind her of him and his love for her in his absence.

This method of parenting was all too familiar to Astarion because it was the way in which his parents raised him many years ago, but unlike his parents, Cazador made more of an effort to spend time with his child. 

Given how egregiously cruel his master was on average, that was a shocking thing, and Astarion had yet to figure out why this child was spared from his renowned malice. He suspected that it was because the child was Cazador’s newest possession that he hadn’t yet grown bored of, but then again, it was also amazing that the child’s real father hadn’t been turned into a vampire spawn—another slave for the twisted coven that Cazador ruled. But who knew what the future held?

Violeta clapped her hands excitedly, delighted to have Astarion as a playmate. Now that she had him as her captive audience, she didn’t know what to do at first. Forgetting the script that she made up in her head on the way up to her room, she could only gawk at Astarion with her mouth open like a fish, waiting for him to say or do something that would give her an idea of how their night of fun together should start.

“Well?” he said, meeting her bewildered gaze with an equally quizzical expression. “Aren’t you going to offer me some tea?”

Astarion used to love drinking tea, but after he became a vampire, the enticing aromas belied the flavor of any teas he might sample. Every single one of them was the same to his transformed palate: it was like sipping the watered-down ashes emptied from a tobacco pipe. But he assumed that, at this tea party, anything she served him would be imaginary. He wouldn’t have to endure the misery of drinking real tea while writhing and clutching his stomach in a painful effort to keep it all in his gut.

He was wrong.

A sudden expression of realization came across Violeta’s face when she remembered something important. Astarion observed her with worry wrinkling his brow as she reached beneath the hem of the tablecloth and pulled something out. A large unopened bottle was placed upon the table, and Violeta beamed at Astarion in pride of her possession.

The glass vessel was immediately recognizable to Astarion, and he knew exactly what it contained. “That’s Cazador’s—…that’s your father’s special reserve. How did you get that? Why do you have it? Do you even know what’s in it?”

Violeta giggled, grabbing the cork with one hand and the neck of the bottle with the other, twisting in a futile effort to open it. “Papa left the cabinet unlocked, so I got one and hid it in my room.” Giving up on uncorking the bottle herself, she passed it across the table to Astarion. “I can’t get it open. Can you?”

Simply looking at the bottle brought a cold sweat to Astarion’s forehead. Like her, he was forbidden from touching one of these bottles, let alone drink from it. Within them was humanoid blood; this one in particular—according to the handwritten label—contained blood taken from a young male tiefling. There were other details included on the label, but Astarion suspected that Violeta grabbed this bottle because “tiefling” was among the words she knew how to read.

“Violeta, we should put this back where you found it.” Astarion picked up the bottle, but before he could stand, the child dove onto the table and seized him by the wrist.

“No!” she cried out. “Please open it! I’ll share it with you if you open it for me! I want to try it. Pretty please?”

Her offer was tempting. Astarion often stopped to stare longingly at the cabinet that Cazador kept his private reserves of blood in, wrestling with himself mentally about whether he should pick the lock and grab a bottle or three. It’d undoubtedly result in a horrible beating once Cazador inevitably found out about his thievery, but it would be worth the risk.

But how long had _this_ bottle been missing from the collection, all without Cazador ever noticing that it had vanished? He must have thought that Dobrogost drank it. Though Lord Bludov wasn’t a vampire himself, he indulged in the drinking of blood and had a peculiar love/hate relationship with his own kind, so Cazador probably didn’t think much of this bottle coming up missing.

Why _should_ it be returned?

Astarion shook Violeta’s hand away from his wrist, then, with both hands wrapped around the neck of the bottle, bit into the cork and yanked it out with his teeth. The aroma that wafted out of the bottle assaulted his senses when he plucked the cork from his fangs and placed it on the table. His lips were drawn to the opening in the bottle, but an unseen force was repelling him from it once his mouth was about an inch away.

“I can’t do it,” he said to himself, slamming the bottle back down on the table and turning sideways in his chair. Just the presence of the uncorked bottle made him more upset by the fact that he physically couldn’t chug every drop of blood inside it down; it taunted him, and he hallucinated seeing Cazador’s smug face in the reflection on the glass when he glanced over his shoulder at it.

Violeta eyed her caretaker concernedly and took the bottle with her as she slid back into her seat, causing the lacey tablecloth to slope more towards her end of the table. She sniffed the lip of the bottle curiously, then poured half of the liquid into her flowery porcelain teapot. Small droplets of blood that splashed out while she poured stained the white tablecloth with crimson splotches that would be difficult to scrub out later.

“It smells funny,” she commented idly, now transferring some of the drink from the teapot into two separate teacups.

“It does,” Astarion responded flatly, covering his mouth and his nose with a hand to keep himself from going into an irate frenzy; spilled blood had a way of making his head spin, and with how Cazador tended to starve him, that was a difficult sensation to overcome. He felt lightheaded.

Violeta gently nudged the second teacup in Astarion’s direction, pushing it forward by the saucer underneath it. The elven man shook his head, rejecting the offering, but the tiefling girl was persistent.

“You have to do what I say,” she reminded him. “Daddy wants you to do what I tell you to, no matter what.”

Astarion wrinkled his nose at her, and he had half a mind to chastise her for being a brat, but the anticipative stare she was giving him made it more apparent to him that she said that for a reason.

Putting a finger onto the edge of the saucer, Astarion dragged the teacup the rest of the way towards himself and tried once again to drink the blood. He was handling the teacup as if he’d been served an extremely hot drink and was afraid that it wasn’t yet the time to take an experimental sip.

During this attempt, the only resistance he was met with was his own.

His eyes flitted back and forth between the cup in his fingers and young Violeta’s intense gaze, and for reasons he didn’t entirely understand, his mind was brought back to the first time he’d ever seen the child. It was on the night that she was born, and she laid in the old crib in a room of the Szarr manor that was previously locked up for many years: the nursery.

As a baby girl, she squirmed and cooed in her peaceful slumber, while Astarion held onto the edge of the crib, watching her rest and mulling over how bizarre it was for there to be a living, mortal child in this dreadful place. And Cazador, the most monstrous person he’d ever met, was the one who made the decision to keep this child and raise it as his own. That idea alone invoked so many questions and so many mixed emotions. 

It was all too baffling to process, and, unfortunately, when Cazador entered the room to check on his newly adopted child that night and caught Astarion looming over the crib, the worst was assumed of the vampire spawn’s intentions. Cazador’s mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that Astarion plotted to murder the child in cold blood—to drain her dry for the purpose of taking revenge on his master for every cruelty inflicted upon him during his years of servitude.

Astarion never recalled being thrashed so hard, not even when he was assaulted by the Gur that nearly took his life before Cazador did. The thought of killing Violeta hadn’t crossed his mind before his master hauled him out of the nursery, threw him down the stairway, and pummeled him on the bottom floor until Dobrogost, baffled by the sight, separated them from each other to inquire about what had happened. And maybe to prevent Cazador from accidentally killing his “favorite” vampire spawn.

After that incident, a subconscious hatred towards the child boiled in Astarion’s veins every time he saw her face and was further fueled by her spoiled behavior, but when he looked at her now, the sentiment had changed. She had no reason to offer him this cup full of blood, but she did. He assumed she always detested him as much as he loathed her, but perhaps his personal biases led him astray. Surely, if she didn’t like him at least a little, she wouldn’t have done this.

Of course, even if Astarion still wanted to do her harm, he couldn’t because of Cazador’s power over him. Cazador knew that, too, at the time he battered Astarion simply for looking at his apparent newborn child, but an elder vampire’s raving paranoia wasn’t always founded upon rational thinking—everything and anything was perceived as a potential threat to their precious holdings that they amassed over the passing generations.

Regardless, Astarion’s bitter feelings towards Violeta were softened considerably, and that at least served to make this night a less miserable affair.

“Thank you,” Astarion muttered quietly, sipping slowly from the cup. 

Real humanoid blood splashed into his mouth, and he couldn’t believe it. He thought he might tilt back the cup and receive nothing—that he’d peer into it, only to see the liquid vanish via a magical spell. He pinched his face with his fingers to see if he was genuinely awake and not entrapped in a dream that was too good to be true.

The blood tasted wonderful; the rancid animals that Cazador permitted him to feed from couldn’t compare to this flavor. Knowing that he would have to return to drinking from rats and other putrid specimens was the only disappointing aspect of this moment because now he had something significantly better to compare it to and he’d never forget the flavor.

“Can I have some more?” Astarion held his cup out eagerly while licking his lips. His hand trembled so much that Violeta struggled to pour him a second serving without spilling more on the table.

“Is it really that good?” She put down the teapot, sampled the blood from her cup, and smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth contemplatively.

No longer shaking horribly from his formerly unsated cravings, Astarion was able to compose himself and focus on his charge. “What do you think?”

“It tastes like meat that didn’t get cooked all the way,” Violeta answered, yet she kept taking small sips.

Astarion helped himself to another refill. He never thought he’d enjoy a tea party again in his existence, but he was happy to be proven wrong, and the lack of actual tea was no issue of concern for him. “Do you like it?”

Licking the blood from her lips, Violeta giggled. “Yeah.”

“Ah.” The vampire was unsure of how to react to her response, but his continued indulgence in what was in his cup bought him time to think it over. “I suppose you’ll take after your Papa in that way, won’t you?” he asked glumly.

He noted her puzzled expression and sighed, folding one leg into his lap and holding his ankle in place with his free hand. “Your parents don’t tell you much about what’s going on around you, do they?”

Violeta shrugged at him and swung her legs back and forth underneath the table self-consciously.

“Are you happy here?” Astarion asked.

The girl canted her head. “In my room?”

“No, I mean _here_. Do you like your home?”

“Yeah!” she said more enthusiastically.

“Does anything ever frighten you here?”

She had to think about her answer. “It’s scary when strangers try to break into the house sometimes.”

Astarion knew she was speaking of monster hunters, foolhardy adventurers, and the like. She was too young to discern the difference, so they were all the same to her: weird people she’d hadn’t seen before in her life barging in through doors uninvited for no apparent reason, shouting, swinging weapons, and casting spells at her loved ones.

It must have been horrifying as a small child to regularly witness home invasions that typically had murderous intent. Most of the time, the occurrences were handled quite cleanly, but on the occasions that things got messy, it was difficult to explain it all away to someone who was exceedingly curious, yet nowhere near ready to understand, let alone cope with, the truth. What did the world look like through her innocent eyes?

“Do you ever wish you lived someplace safer?” said Astarion.

“It is safe here,” Violeta contended. “Daddy says I’ll always be safe if I stay here, where I’m supposed to be.”

Of course Cazador would tell her that, Astarion thought to himself. It was an easy way of convincing her to never leave.

Suddenly, Astarion became aware of the “guests” seated with them at the table: the variety of stuffed animals. Their pitch-black button eyes had an unsettling quality to them. In any other home, the toys would appear normal, but the inherent wickedness of a vampire’s lair had a way of making everything within it seem more sinister.

Astarion lifted the dolls in the chairs nearest to him so that he could face them towards the walls. Their judgmental stares reminded him too much of Cazador, which wasn’t surprising given that it was the vampire lord who gave Violeta most of these dolls. 

For all Astarion knew, Cazador might have had the dolls enchanted to observe everything going on around them. The blood bond between vampire spawn and master made it feel like he was always being watched.

“Don’t you at least wish that you had children your own age to play with?” Astarion asked once he was satisfied with the diminished number of eyes scrutinizing them.

Flipping open a small tin on the table, Violeta fished out a strip of dried venison and offered it to Astarion, but he shook his head. She then gnawed on the piece of meat herself. 

“I already do have friends my age!” she replied, chewing the food in her mouth noisily.

The vampire spawn looked doubtful of her claim. “Is that so? Where?”

She pointed at the boarded-up window covered with thick layers of curtains in her room, indicating the graveyard outside.

“There aren’t any children out there,” Astarion argued, “and I know you rarely get to go past the gates and into the city proper.”

Astarion supposed that if Violeta wasn’t going to show any table manners, he shouldn’t have to, either. He grabbed the half-empty blood reserve bottle by its neck and drank directly from it, eager to get his fill long before Cazador returned home and noticed that his vampire spawn was strangely less moody and fatigued. 

Like with alcohol, Astarion was mindful that he should appear sober by the time the coven arrived home. The other vampire spawn under Cazador’s control would most assuredly be envious if they knew that he got to have a taste of what their master kept locked up in a cabinet for evenings when he felt peckish either before or after his nightly feeding from a live specimen.

“There’s _lots_ of other kids here,” Violeta mumbled, crossing her arms.

She’d gone so quiet for a moment that Astarion forgot she was there, having become too wrapped up in his concerns. “What are you talking about? No, there aren’t.”

Losing her temper, Violeta stood on the seat of her chair and held up her arms exasperatedly. “Yeah, there are!” she exclaimed. It infuriated her when no one believed her when she was actually telling the truth, and she was never bound to learn patience from either of her parents. “When the grown-ups come around, they get scared and disappear! They go back to hiding in the ground!”

Despite trying, Astarion couldn’t rationally picture in his head what she described until it occurred to him that the children that she spoke of could be ghosts. They had to be. Most living things that came this far into the heart of the cemetery didn’t leave it alive, and the presence of living children wouldn’t go undetected for long.

“Violeta,” Astarion said carefully, waiting for her to catch her breath and sit back down before going on, “those children…they’re…not like you. You need to have other children to play with who are more like you.”

“Some of them are tieflings,” she said.

Astarion groaned, slapping his forehead. “No, that’s not what I meant.” He rubbed his face while thinking of another way to communicate what he was getting at without being too blunt. “Haven’t you noticed that you and your Papa are different from everyone else here?”

Her eyes wandered around aimlessly as if she might find the answer among all her adorable belongings that packed the room. “…I dunno.”

The vampire’s patience waned further. “You can’t think of _anything_ that stands out as particularly unusual?”

“Uhm… I guess there’s some things…”

“Such as?”

Grunting huffily, she said, “I dunno… We’re mostly the same, but… Hmh…” Her sharp teeth worried on her bottom lip while she thought of comparisons in her mind.

“Never mind,” Astarion relented. “Forget that I said anything about it.”

“Okay.” Freed from the troubling topic, Violeta smiled again. “…Can I braid your hair?”

It was amusing how easily a child could move on from one idea to the next. Astarion wasn’t accustomed to it. Truthfully, he didn’t care for children; they frequently annoyed him and were difficult to reason with. Violeta wasn’t really an exception, but maybe she _could_ be. There were some things he liked about her.

Chuckling, Astarion asked her, “Why?”

“Because it looks soft and fun to play with.”

“I’d rather you not.” The vampire spawn fluffed his curly white hair, protective of his cherished locks. “Can’t you wait for Cazador to come home and ask to braid _his_ hair instead?”

“Daddy’s hair is greasy…”

Astarion burst into laughter at her unexpected admission. Violeta spoke of her parents as if they were deities, so he was entertained to hear her confess their flaws. The unnatural sheen in Cazador’s hair _did_ make it appear oily, in a way.

“Why are you laughing at me?” Violeta asked, taking personal offense to Astarion’s giggling. “It _is_ greasy! He puts stuff in his hair, and I don’t like when it gets on my hands; it’s yucky!” She glowered when Astarion laughed harder when she elaborated on what she meant while gesticulating with her hands; that wasn’t the reaction she desired.

Astarion quelled his laughter to allow himself to speak. “I believe you,” he promised. “Alright, just for saying that, I’ll let you braid my hair. But be careful with it. I want it to still be attached to my head afterward.”

Nodding, Violeta climbed across the table, shifting her body along the way to avoid bumping over her scattered tea set, and sat behind Astarion when he turned his chair around to let her have access to the back of his head.

“I don’t think Cazador would approve of you crawling on the table like that,” Astarion mentioned, grinning.

“So?” Violeta pinched two strands of white hair between her fingers and fumbled with braiding them together. His hair was shorter up close than she imagined it being. “He’s not here to see, and you won’t tell on me, will you?”

Astarion kept perfectly still and gritted his teeth when he felt the occasional tug on his hair. She wasn’t being too rough, but her braids were a little tight. “I won’t if you don’t tattle on me for drinking what was in that bottle.”

“Okay.” After every successful braid she completed, she transferred the bands from the braids in her own hair to Astarion’s.

Some of the braids displeased her once she had the bands secured in place, so she untangled them and made a new braid with longer sections in her caretaker’s hair. She couldn’t do much with the areas of his hair that were too short.

“I like your hair,” she said, “It’s pretty.”

Astarion smiled at the compliment. “Thank you.”

The pad of the girl’s finger pressed into the back of his head, and she casually added, “Daddy has a bald spot here.”

Covering his mouth, Astarion snickered uncontrollably. “Are you serious? I never noticed.”

“It’s under his hair,” she explained, resuming her work. “He gets mad when I poke it, but I like to because it feels weird. Papa says Daddy’s hair is falling out because he’s angry all the time. Is that true? Can that really happen?”

“I don’t know,” Astarion admitted. “Maybe. I don’t want to find out!”

“Me neither!” she agreed. “I don’t want to be like Oleg with most of my hair gone… I don’t ever see Oleg get angry, though, so why did his hair fall out?”

“I think it’s mostly because he’s old. That tends to happen when people age.”

Violeta whined and patted the top of her head. “I don’t want to get old…”

“Nobody does.”

“How old is Daddy?”

“ _Very_ old.”

“Older than Oleg?”

“I think Cazador’s the eldest one here.”

“Wow… But he doesn’t look old!”

“That’s a matter of opinion, but it’s true that he doesn’t look his age. Few of us here do, and we’ll look the way as you see us now forever, I imagine.”

“Am I going to get old?”

“I don’t know. That’s up to your father.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Don’t pay much mind to what I say. I’m just thinking aloud.”

“You’re silly, Astarion.”

The vampire spawn didn’t say anything more. He sat there silently, allowing the child to play with his hair for as long as she wanted to. When Violeta was done, she held a hand mirror up to his face, but they both only saw her in it.

“Is it broken?” She waved the mirror around, but the result remained the same no matter how she wielded it: Astarion was nowhere to be seen within its reflection.

“It’s not your mirror that’s broken,” said Astarion. “It’s me.”

* * *

Cazador didn’t arrive home until around an hour before the break of dawn. It was abnormal for him to risk being so far from the security of his coffin this late at night, but his outing hadn’t gone as smoothly as it was supposed to.

Rarely did he ever make a personal appearance when dealing with his cohorts outside of his lair, but sometimes he did so to invoke terror. Besides, his skills needed the occasional sharpening to keep them from becoming dull, and he couldn’t let his minions have all the fun to themselves.

His cohorts, whom he’d sought to teach a lesson tonight, thought they were clever by showing up in the middle of Dobrogost’s rehearsal at The Oasis theater, rather than meeting with him at the appointed place and time that was agreed upon between both parties. 

Jonas Goodnight, the owner of the theater, wasn’t happy about having his rehearsal (and some of the furniture) ruined by the scuffle that broke out, but poor Mr. Goodnight learned to expect situations like this to happen. Nothing at his theater went according to plan; the man was essentially cursed. But Jonas, luckily, adapted to chaos well enough. The theatrics of the vicious fight gave him a few new ideas for the opera’s script, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Cazador was so exhausted that he went straight to his coffin after greeting his excitable daughter with a hug. He walked right past Astarion without looking at him, so he didn’t see the silly, uneven braids in his servant’s hair, nor the unusually lively sparkle in his red eyes. 

When Astarion blathered something incoherent at him as he went by, Cazador waved his hand and grumbled, “Don’t bother me, boy. Can’t you tell that I’m tired? Go put my daughter to bed; she should have been in bed hours ago.”

Less than an hour after Cazador changed clothes and crawled into his coffin, there came a knock on the lid that awoke him moments after he’d slipped off into the dark trance that a vampire’s sleep consisted of.

“Yes?” he said irritably, voice muffled by the closed lid above him. 

As the lid was shifted aside, he squinted his eyes and guarded them against the torchlight illuminating the crypts. As a powerful vampire, he didn’t need so many torches to see perfectly well, but he liked the moody effect of the lighting when it wasn’t being shone in his eyes while he was trying to rest.

“Close it,” he demanded, but when he forced his eyelids open, he saw his daughter leaning over the edge of the coffin to peer inside it. A plush toy bat was tucked underneath her arm. “I thought I told Astarion to take you to your room.”

“He did,” Violeta said somberly. “And Papa came with to tuck me into bed, but I can’t go to sleep. Can I sleep in your box with you?”

Cazador scooted to one side of the velvet lining and held his arms out. Violeta grabbed his forearms and lowered herself inside. Tripping on the way down, she accidentally elbowed her father in the ribs. He didn’t make a sound, though he did wince and clutch the spot on his chest that was impacted and waited for the soreness to dissipate before putting the lid back in place over his coffin. A tiny crack was left to let fresh air get in and the stale air to get out so that the girl wouldn’t suffocate in the cramped enclosure.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Violeta apologized, snuggling up against Cazador with her doll squished between them.

Moving the plush bat’s head away from his face, Cazador replied, “Not to worry, dear, you didn’t hurt me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Cazador pressed a kiss to her cheek, and she cringed and laughed when his beard briefly tickled her face. “Now go to sleep. It’s probably daylight outside by now—far past our bedtime.”

Violeta pushed her toy into his face again, intentionally this time. “Kiss my doll goodnight, too.”

Cazador turned his face away from the inanimate fuzzy creature. “I’m not kissing the bat.”

“If you don’t kiss him, he won’t be able to sleep, either!” his daughter protested.

“Dolls don’t need sleep, darling. Get it out of my face, please.”

“Just one kiss!”

Reluctantly, Cazador pecked it on its upturned snout. It made him think of the times when Dobrogost would be lucky enough to catch him midair while he was assuming the form of a bat just to pet his fur and kiss him on the nose like that for his own amusement before releasing him again. Cazador would bite him afterward as punishment for the unnecessary humiliation, then fly off. 

He wondered if that was why his daughter was so attached to this doll when she had dozens of others, many of which were newer and less worn.

Violeta made some squeaking noises, mimicking a bat, then lowered the doll while flapping its fluffy wings with her hands. “He says: ‘Thank you! Goodnight!’”

“You should turn him upside down,” Cazador said. “He’ll sleep better that way. Trust me.”

“Oh!” She flipped the doll the other way around. “Like this?”

Cazador chuckled. “Something like that. Goodnight, dear.”

“G’night, Daddy.”

They both closed their eyes, and for a while, there was silence.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you sleep in a normal bed?”

“It’s not very comfortable for me anymore.”

“Oh, okay…”

Cazador assumed that was the end of the conversation, but another question came to his daughter’s mind.

“Why not?”

“Violeta, I’m _extremely_ tired. Ask me your questions tomorrow, _after_ I’ve rested.”

“I’m sorry…”

“It’s alright, darling.”

The girl tightened her arms around her beloved doll, but it brought her little peace of mind. “…Daddy, am I different from you?”

Cazador leaned up to look at her strangely. “Why are you asking me such odd questions? Where did they come from? Did Astarion say something to you to make you wonder these things?”

“I _am_ different from you, aren’t I?” Violeta dried her forming tears on the doll’s fake fur, sniffling pitifully.

“Violeta…”

“I just want to be like you…”

“I know, dear, I know.” Cradling the child in his arms, Cazador patted her back soothingly, letting her sob and hiccup and get it all out of her system. He hoped that it would help burn away all this energy she had that was keeping her wide awake.

“I love you, Daddy.” Violeta rubbed her eyes with the back of her fist and sucked the mucus back into her nose.

“I love you, too,” he assured her.

“Can Papa get in the box with us?”

“I’m not sure he’ll fit in the box. He’s very large. That’s why he sleeps in the bed upstairs.”

“We should make the box bigger, then, so that all three of us can fit inside.”

Cazador smirked. “I’ll consider it.”

Violeta seemed satisfied with that answer. 

She laid her head upon his chest, never noticing that, unlike Dobrogost, he lacked a heartbeat. Nor did it matter that Cazador was so frigid to the touch all the time; she got cold sometimes, too. It didn’t occur to her that it was strange that, aside from their shared hair color, she didn’t resemble Cazador at all, and that it was obvious that she didn’t get her purple hue from him or her Papa; when Cazador’s face was freshly washed and didn’t have all the makeup on, his was vaguely purple under his translucent pale skin beneath the façade he maintained.

Instinctively, she knew that Astarion was right to point out that there were inherent differences between herself and most of the people that she considered to be her family, but she didn’t care. It was all she ever knew and, for the time being, all she ever wanted to know.

Contented, she drifted off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "If you ever awake in the mirror of a bad dream and, for a fraction of a second, you can't remember where you are, just open your window and follow your memories."
> 
> Recommended Listening: Father and Daughter by Paul Simon

**Author's Note:**

> "Life began when I saw your face, and I hear your laugh like a serenade. How long do you want to be loved? Is forever enough? 'Cause I'm never, never giving you up."
> 
> Recommended Listening: Lullaby by The Chicks


End file.
